A few months later I decided to give the mp3s a listen at work and the album finally got stuck in my head. I played it again a couple of days later and again and then I couldn't get enough of it. I completely ignored it when it came to writing my 2015 End of Year List, but now it's one of my favourite albums of last year. The last few months have consisted of this album played very regularly.
Compared to their previous albums and EPs, there are fewer of the heavy moments and quirks but the feel of the band is still there - they still come across as the Godspeed of emo - daring and epic. I say this a lot, but there are highlight throughout the album, so I'm just going to list them:
You Can't Live There Forever is the gentle opener I wasn't expecting with lovely strings - it sets the album up perfectly but was probably also the thing that through me on those first few listens. January 10th 2014 was first song that really made an impression - I love the quick-paced life-story and the incredible female vocals that follow it for the rest of the song. The Word Lisa has a huge ending and the transition between Rage Against the Dying of the Light and Ra Patera Dance (with its short guitar solo and keyboard moment laced with strings) is seamless. Mental Health is beautiful and slow - nearly a ballad - whereas Wendover is the song that could most easily fit on an older album. Haircuts For Everybody is the most traditional emo song but also feels suitably huge when the soaring chorus kicks in. Side D then completes the album with the two longest songs - I Can Be Afraid of Anything and Mount Hum (which I truly hope is a Hum reference). The former has one of the albums most singable lines ("I really did dig my own hole") and explodes into a perfectly layered outro and the latter provides a wide-ranging closer.
All in all, I'm floored by this album. Listening to it now, I can't believe it took me so long to get into. I don't recommend TWIAB to many people (because I know the varied nature won't be everyone's cup of tea) but I've been recommending Harmlessness much more widely - the accessibility works in its favour but there's so much depth that the album is still growing on me; I didn't expect that to be the case. Even if they hadn't released Between Bodies, I think this album would have been the perfect cure to the "awkward second album". A magnificent album.
Format: Double 12", insert
Tracks: 13
Cost: £22 new
Bought: Banquet Records
When: 25/11/15
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: Download code
